Tall Ships 2017 Blog – No.3

Day 1 on the ship has been completed! We arrived on the ship and we were greeted by the Captain who showed us to our accommodation. We found that we were sleeping in pipe cots (that are surprisingly comfy!) And we unpacked our stuff. Emma and I were just in complete disbelief that we are finally here!!

We met the rest of our watch team who are from a school somewhere in Yorkshire. We became friends quite quickly and have had a laugh together. We also have had quite a few briefings which consisted of subjects like learning what to do in the event of a ‘man overboard’ and how to use the ropes to ‘make fast’. As you can probably tell, we are learning loads of new strange terminology but we are learning quite quickly. Right now, we are sat in the ‘messroom’ listening to one of our youth mentors, Mike, who is giving us a quiz on pop culture. It’s amazing how much he knows and how is knowledge on current music trends is so much better than all of us! Ah well, I am ready for bed and ready for Day 2.

Signing off!
Bex

So, today we arrived in the ship and met all of our crew mates for the first time. To our surprise, there are only 8 other voyage crew! Luckily, there is a whole team of experienced sailors to help us sail the ship.

After lunch, we were shown the techniques for casting and hauling the lines – there seemed to be hundreds of commands to remember! We then learn to steer the ship, before going over all of the safety procedures such as man overboard. After this, we had a name game to get to know our other crew mates, whilst we also had a pop quiz which was really fun. We are now relaxing in the mess but I’m panning to go to bed soon as I’m super tired after our exciting day today.